


Touchy

by coolbyrne



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 02:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21067196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolbyrne/pseuds/coolbyrne
Summary: At a boring seminar, Jack can't keep her hands to herself. Slibbs.





	Touchy

**Author's Note:**

> Just a fun little idea I got reading jenni3penny's current work in progress. I was also going to change the title (my Google docs file name and the actual name often end up being 2 different things), but she said leave it. So I did. :)

“Hey, you’re early,” she whispered as she took the seat to his left. Her tone reached her ears and she said, in her regular voice, “Why am I whispering? There’s hardly anyone here.” Getting comfortable, she casually remarked, “Didn’t take you to be one to be all gung-ho about spending an hour listening to someone drone on about the bureau’s social media and corporate policy. Do you even have a twitter account?”

“What’s a twitter?”

She shoulder bumped him. “Don’t play coy. You pretend you don’t know these things just so you can get someone else to do the work for you.”

“You some kinda head doctor or somethin’?”

Rolling her eyes, she asked, “So why are you here? And so early.”

“Leon said he’d talk to Accounts to waive the 5 year audit down to 1 year. And gettin’ here early means I can pick the seat closest to the exit.”

“Ah,” she said, approving of the logic. “Unfortunately, I think they lock the doors to keep us in.” She laughed at the speed in which his head turned around to see.

…..

She wasn’t laughing now.

“... Section 14, subsection e deals with selfies at the office party.”

The storm that had begun 5 minutes into a seminar that didn't seem to be ending any time soon beat on the roof and had lulled her into a self-consciousness that he found amusing. Her eyes were closed and her hand had found its way to his jacket, idly running her thumb along the corner hem. The backs of her fingers brushed along his thigh in a way that he wouldn't admit soothed him as much as it clearly did her. When her lips moved but no sound came out, he leaned into her.

"What?"

Without opening her eyes, she murmured, "Masterson."

Gibbs glanced at the man 4 rows and 2 seats away. "What about him?"

"He's be the first one I'd eat in an apocalyptic event."

His short cough drew brief attention from several people who were just as bored as them.

His mouth hovered near her ear. "Not Phillips?" he asked, referencing the speaker who was currently responsible for their predicament. 

"No." She shook her head, her hair tickling his nose. "You always have to keep one person around who's more annoying than you. That way, you're not the next one eaten."

"Who said you're annoying?"

His gruff question, filled with the kind of protectiveness he had for everyone he cared about, made her smile. 

"I love that _that's_ what offends you. Not the cannibalism part."

He shrugged. "I'd eat everyone here if I had to." He leaned closer. "Present company excluded." He wondered- not for the first time when it came to her- if he wasn't a masochist, sitting so close, whispering into her hair, letting her fingers wander a short path up and down his thigh. His brain tried to will everything else to focus on anything else.

She didn't help matters by whispering, "There's a double entendre of disappointment in there, somewhere."

"Go back to sleep," he ordered, his brain giving up the ghost with _that_ image now keeping it occupied.

The rain, the seminar and the fact Gibbs didn't bother to shift back into his seat made it easy to obey. The soft fabric under her thumb was a comforting touchstone and the warmth that permeated from his shoulder into hers made her want to curl up and forget the world. Something under her fingers was sturdy and gave off a warmth of its own, and she acknowledged it by giving a thankful caress.

He tried not to flex his thigh under the touch, and glanced over to stop her with a stare, only to find out she was oblivious to her wayward fingers. His leg reflexively twitched away, in an effort to save whatever strands of composure remained. Her low, sleepy murmur of disappointment made him sigh. Quickly coming up with a solution, he slipped his hand under hers, thinking it was the best compromise between giving her something to do and saving his sanity.

That lasted all of 40 seconds.

Because now, there was no barrier between her skin and his. Her fingertips, soft except for her trigger finger (_and why was _that_ sexy as hell?_) stroked the back of his hand in the same meandering way they had done before. She hummed as light as her touch and he clenched his jaw to keep quiet. It was an unnecessary precaution- half the group were inexplicably enthralled by the speaker, the other half asleep. Only he seemed to be aware of what she was doing; only he seemed ready to climb out of his skin.

Skin that she was stroking in a pattern that didn't seem to have any design except to drive him crazy. Her calloused finger dipped into the hollow base of his thumb until it decided to trace the crease inside his wrist. The light pressure encouraged his hand to turn over (was what he was telling himself), and her finger traced his life line before charting a trail to the chain around his wrist. It had just hooked under the links when thunder mercifully saved his heart from thumping out of his chest. 

She jumped from the thunderclap and squeezed his hand when the lights briefly went off. The generator quickly kicked in, restoring the electricity, though it took a little longer for the fright to leave her face. 

“Sorry,” she immediately said. “The dark and loud bangs. Not a good combo for me.” 

She made a motion to pull her hand away but he held firm, and he wondered if she was realizing for the first time what she had been doing the last 10 minutes. If the pink flush was anything to go by, he knew the answer. He would’ve smirked and enjoyed her slight discomfort if she still didn’t look so shaken.

“You fidget,” he said, drawing her attention away from the unwanted moment. 

She smiled at the distraction. “Yeah. Sometimes my hands get away from me. I mean, obviously.” She punctuated her words by tilting her head towards their hands.

“Good thing for me the power didn’t go out sooner considerin’ where your hand was 5 minutes ago.”

“Oh. My. God. You’re the worst.”

He leaned into her and waited until his silence went so long that she turned her cheek into his jaw as a way to prompt him. With a softness he rarely used, he said, “Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“When the power goes out again, we make a run for the door.”

The warmth her laughter brushed over his ear sent a different kind of heat everywhere else.

“What if the door’s locked?” she asked.

“I’ll shoot it.”

“You don’t have your gun.”

“I’ll kick it down.”

“With those knees?”

His low grumble only made her laugh more, and he didn’t think it was such a bad trade off. Almost on cue, the lights went out again. She reflexively squeezed his hand and turned into him close enough that he could feel her lips against his stubble. Daringly, he pressed his mouth against the corner of hers.

“What is it with you an’ me an’ storms, Sloane?”

He could hear her swallow. “How did you know it would go out again. You said ‘when’.”

He accepted her avoidance of his question just as he accepted the way she almost nuzzled against his mouth.

“Idiots have the generator on the roof.”

She laughed again and he felt like a dumbstruck idiot for wanting to make her do that over and over. The rest of the room seemed to realize the lights weren’t coming back on and they were debating amongst themselves as to what to do next.

“I know what to do next,” he said.

“That’s a much better double entendre than your earlier one.”

His chaste kiss was meant as a small punishment for her sass. “Nothin’ double about it. But for Masterson’s sake, maybe we should go.”

She nodded in the dark. “For Masterson’s sake.”

Giving her hand another squeeze, he asked, “You ready?”

“From the first day we met.”

They bolted for the door before he could trip over her words.

…..

_Epilogue_

She saw it the next morning, sitting by itself on her desk. He hadn’t said a word to her about the previous day; it was as if the kiss they shared in his doorway, and the one in the basement, and the one in his bed all just fell into the natural order of things. Like the elephant painting hanging behind her, there was a sticky note attached.

_Found one of these fidget things. When I’m not there._

Her grin lit up the room and she dropped into her chair, spinning the wheel in her hand.

…..

-end.


End file.
